GCN Goes Bikepacking In The Atlas Mountains, Morocco

For a first taste of bikepacking, Si’s certainly not gone in steady – with an epic 4 day trip from Morocco’s capital of Marrakesh to the high Atlas Mountains. And who better to show him the ropes than former Transcontinental Race winner and bikepacking enthusiast Josh Ibbett.

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It’s 6.30am in a remote, rocky location in the High Atlas Mountains, Simon Richardson is waking up from his first ever Bivvy. That’s right, a whole lot of chamois time for the former pro cyclist who has often professed his disliking of ‘touring’.

Will the experience change Si’s mind? Thankfully experienced bikepacker Josh Ibbett is on hand talk and show Si through how to handle the trip when it gets remote!

Map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under CC BY SA

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Photos: © Velo Collection (TDW) / Getty Images & © Bettiniphoto / http://www.bettiniphoto.net/

Music:
Cinematic drums 19 – Rannar Sillard
Traditional twist ack varmeland du skona – Traditional
Hya – Mo Staks
Divergent – ooyyTthat impossible last breath – Da Sein
Smashing punks 8 – Stefan Netsman
Aer – Dew of light
Xixx – Twelwe
Orange – Siny
Wild in seattle 3 – Victor Olsson
Too unusual – Yomoti

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– Well, good morning. It’s currently about half past six in the morning, and I am about two and half thousand metres in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Yesterday Josh and I, that’s Josh over there, more on him in just a moment, we rode about 130K through some of the most remote

And breathtaking scenery I have ever been in. And then we decided to call it a day at this very spot and then slept out under the stars. This is quite an introduction to bikepacking. This is gonna be something pretty new to me. In fact, I’ve not done anything quite like this for 17 years, and that wasn’t with a bike. So as you can see, I’m pretty nervous. But because I’m like a fish out of water,

I have drafted in a total expert to show me the ropes. This is Josh, bikepacker, ultra-endurance cyclist, former winner of the legendary Transcontinental race, and a man eminently comfortable with sleeping in hedges. We fly out to Morocco in three days, so Josh has stopped by to make sure

That I’ve got everything that I need and nothing that I don’t. We are travelling light. – Hey, Si, why’ve you got three pairs of pants with you? – ‘Cause we’re going away for five days. – No, no, you just need one pair and that’ll be fine. (laughing)

– Well, what does he know, anyway. I’ll pack ’em when he’s not looking. Next up: Morocco. This is Marrakech. This is one of the gateways to the centre of the city. It’s currently lunchtime on Monday and we’ve got a flight out of here on Friday morning.

In that time, we’ve got a route plotted out that’s 400 Ks long. We’ve got to get over the Atlas Mountains, turn right when we get to the desert, and then all the way back over the Atlas. It is only 8,000 metres of climbing. – But there’s also a catch.

We checked out the route on Komoot while we were planning and it’s telling us that there’s potentially a large amount of off-road riding on day three. In its own words, it was “extreme mountain biking.” – Extreme mountain biking. Shall we go bikepacking, Josh? – Yeah, I think so. Let’s go. (dramatic electronic music) – Well, we survived, which I think is the main thing, isn’t it? Actually really doable, like super hectic but you know, like, you get into it. – It’s controlled chaos. – Controlled chaos, yeah. – If you play by the rules you’re okay. If you start trying to stop at traffic lights and things

Then it’s gonna go wrong for you. – Right, or horses, as you found out. – Yes. – To be fair though, when you’re looking at that backdrop with those mountains you kind of always know where you’re going. I mean, you just kind of hear them calling.

Come on lads, come on, up up up. Aha. (laughing) So Josh, maybe you should fill us in a little bit more on your backstory. I’ve said that you’ve won the Transcontinentals, you have. I’ve said you like sleeping in hedges, which you do. But how exactly have you got to this place,

And so early as well, ’cause you’re only 29, actually 30 today, sorry 30 today. – I’m old now. Officially a masters racer. (laughing) I actually started in a very similar fashion to you, so I started racing cross-country in the UK. – Yeah. – But I found as I got older

I was just better at, I always did better in the longer races, kind of the marathons, and then through university I started doing 12-hour mountain bike races, and I won a few and did well, so the next step was kind of 24-hour racing. And then I really enjoyed stage races,

And it kind of escalated from there, and then I saw people like Mike Hall who I’d raced against and knew do the around the world trip, and then he started the Transcontinental Race and won the Tour Divide, and I was really inspired. And I was actually really scared to do the Transcontinental

Race to start with. – I’m not surprised. What, it’s (mumbles) miles– – ‘Cause it’s intimidating. (mumbling) Exactly, and I’d never done anything like it before. So I didn’t enter the first one, but I watched it avidly, I was (mumbles) watcher and the day it finished I booked a one-way flight

To Slovenia, brought all the kit and rode home, and that was that. – Wow. – And the next year I entered, and it kind of escalated. – So I see bikepacking came out of a competitive thing, and now do you bikepack for bikepacking itself? I mean, you went round the world

This summer. – Yeah, well, I’ve done extensive travelling, and I actually found that the TCR opened my eyes, because I’d never been really outside of the sort of Western Europe area. And it’s all very kind of similar, and TCR took me through Eastern Europe and really opened my eyes.

You ride from your house, basically, ’cause the first year I did it it was in London, and then you ride all the way to Turkey and you see the gradual change. I just love the change of cultures, – Yeah. – and I wanted to see more.

So now I have a tick list of places in the world I wanna see, Morocco being one of them. – Nice, done. – And I love it, it’s, whether it’s racing or just cruising around seeing the place. (gentle music) – So, kind of size of kit bag I’m used to, but there is a pair of boxer shorts in there. Well, it’s time for second breakfast. We are at 1400 metres, in the foothills of the Atlas, and you know what– (speaking off camera) Ah, yeah. – Cheese omelette. – Thank you very much. – Merci. One of the things I’m learning to love about bikepacking is the fact that you stop whenever you want

And have something to eat and drink. – The great thing is, you can pretty much eat whatever you want as well. – Ah, the coffee, yes. So this is a Moroccan specialty called a nuss-nuss, which means a half and half. So I think that’s espresso and milk.

It’s like a kind of a cortado, a Moroccan flat white. Amazing, nuss-nuss, it’s what it’s all about. Hipsters everywhere will be eating them soon. Oh my god, look at that. Ah, wow. – That’s the one. That’s the one. – What a spot to be riding pushbikes. – Smells nice. Nice, cool. This is the spot, mate. – Wowie, look at that. – Woohoo! – Oh nice. – Alright, cool– – Okay, so this is apparently a barbecue joint, so we are choosing our meat. They’re gonna grill it for us, and then there’s this super cool place out the back over a suspension bridge. What an amazing spot. (speaking foreign language) – This is minced meat. It’s called kofta.

(crosstalk drowns speakers) – Yeah, lovely. – It’s quite a feat of engineering, that, isn’t it? Right, and here we go. This is the literal high point of day two. As you can see, it is the summit of the Col du Tichka at 2260 metres. It’s been a pretty long slog to get up here,

But it’s not the most brutal climb I think we’ve ever done. – No, no, it’s not the steepest thing. There’s a few sections, but it’s kind of pretty gradual. The thing that got us the most was the thin air. – Yeah. – The last half hour

We’ve been out of breath quite a lot. – Yeah, and to be fair, actually stopping for lunch halfway up probably helped, as did stopping for second breakfast before that. So it’s not like we’ve raced up, is it? – No, it’s definitely not. – No.

But we do have now is pretty much 30 kilometres of uninterrupted descent to where we’re sleeping tonight. – And I would like to add that I got here first. – Well, there we go. That is day two done. Little bit harder than day one, it’s got to be said. We are now on the south side of the Atlas Mountains, having just ridden over them. What a day it’s been. Incredible views, you’re going from like,

The lush northern slopes on the way up from Marrakech to here, where it’s super arid, isn’t it? But just incredible. We’re now about at the town of Agouim, and this is where we are gonna be staying for the night. – To refuel, have a good sleep,

And tomorrow we head off into the unknown. But we know a little bit, actually. We know there’s gonna be some gravel, we know there’s few resupply points, and we know it might get a bit, bit scary. – Yeah. This is the point at which Komoot said

That it’s gonna be an extreme mountain bike ride. And actually, we have got no hotel tomorrow night, we are bivvying out in the High Atlas. So that’s a first for me. – Let’s hope it’s not too cold then. – Yeah, please let it not be cold. Anyway, that’s tomorrow.

First things first, a beer and a refuel. – And possibly a shower. – Moroccans really know how to do breakfast, that’s for sure, so just finishing off freshly squeezed orange juice, that was a nuss-nuss coffee, ah, merci. (speaking foreign language) Olives, bread, and this little bad boy is an omelette with cumin. – This msemen, which is a bit like a pancake,

It’s kind of like a chapati or something, with honey. This what everyone eats for breakfast. – It’s gonna be a big day, mate. So 3000 metres of ascent today, and what that translates as in reality is 3000 metres of ascent, which I kind of really glossed over until we started struggling up the first 11% gradient. Think it is gonna be a big day, this. Whee. Civilization. Wow. I was not expecting that, mate. Not entirely sure where we are. This little village has just come out of nowhere on this epic descent. And apparently it’s market day, it’s Wednesday, it’s market day. We’re just gonna see whether we can grab some lunch, second lunch, we disappear off kind of up that way,

Into the mountains. But it’s cool. Hanging out with some kids. They don’t speak French, don’t speak my level of French anyway. – Bonjour. – Bonjour. – Now by now, you’ve probably worked out that Josh and I are not completely alone on this trip, and that is a very good thing, ‘case otherwise all you would be watching is a load of shaky GoPro footage and listening to a load of wind noise.

And you would also be missing out on all the how-to videos that’re gonna be coming out on the channel over the next few weeks, ’cause Josh is taking us through the finer points of bikepacking. But anyway, rather than hide that fact we thought we would introduce our little crew.

So this is Tom, who is our filmmaker. This is Pete, who’s riding the motorbike that Tom can sit on. And then this is Aziz, who’s our local legend, and he is driving that 4×4 to stash camera kit and Pete and Tom’s luggage in. – At this point, it’s worth pointing out

That we are carrying everything we would use on this trip if we were doing it by ourselves. I’m pretty adamant that Si does it properly, I want him to have a proper bikepacking experience, and therefore we are not taking any advantage of the 4×4 or the motorbike to carry stuff for us.

We’re doing this properly. – We are indeed. Now, we’re gonna be together for pretty much the whole trip except for this much talked-about Wednesday afternoon, Wednesday evening, Thursday morning where effectively, Josh and I are gonna be using tracks that only bikes can go on. – Apparently.

– Yeah, hopefully they can go on them. Hopefully the tracks exist, we don’t know. Hey. (crowd chatter) That’s a cool little town there. – Our last 20K has been amazing. Gradually undulating, loads of nice curves, great views. – Yeah, a real contrast to this morning where we were climbing up through this really arid landscape and then suddenly descending down this valley with this beautiful kind of oasis

Next to the river at the bottom. It’s just been magic, isn’t it? – Yeah. And we weren’t even expecting tarmac, we thought it’d be dirt roads all day, so– Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all, Si. – Yeah. – Bonjour. – Well, this is the point at which the guys

Are gonna have to leave us, so we’re gonna do a ceremonial hand-over of camera and, well, this is it now, Josh, isn’t it? – I guess the– Ah, lens cap, let’s not lose this. I guess the quality’s gonna go downhill from here. – Yeah, a little bit. (Josh laughs) It’ll be fine.

– Steady, steady. – I’ve seen ’em do this all the time. Right, Josh. (horn honking) There we go. (engines roaring) So that is it, the guys are leaving us. It’s currently just after six in the evening and we’ve got another couple of hours of riding

Before Josh reckons it’s gonna be time to bivvy out. So it’s obviously gonna depend a little bit on location, it’s gonna depend a little bit on altitude, we don’t wanna be up too high. We’ve gotta go over about 8000 feet, so, so we’d better do some pedalling, eh, mate?

– Yeah, I guess so. (gentle electronic music) So we’re now at 2000 metres and we’ve climbed our way up this valley, and it’s not quite what we were expecting. It’s actually, we’ve been passing loads of tiny little villages. All this green land you can see behind us

Is actually farmland, and the little villages here are thoroughly self-sufficient. – Yeah, it’s incredible, isn’t it? It’s like a secret kingdom. Totally wasn’t expecting to find, what, 70 people up here, like there’s just enough water in that stream down below to irrigate enough land that they can grow, we’re told barley,

There’s a load of fruit trees down there, – Nuts. – There’s nut trees, yeah, walnuts, almonds. It’s just, it’s incredible, isn’t it? It’s like a little mini paradise hanging 2000 metres up the Atlas Mountains. – And really isolated from anywhere. – Yeah. I mean, this road probably, I mean, it’s super new

So I guess they were really, really cut off, weren’t they? – Yeah, yeah, I mean, we were expecting dirt roads, even some trails at the top, and actually, so far it’s been pretty much fully tarmac, so– – Yeah. – Let’s see if that continues. – Oh yeah.

Right, we’ve got our gravel at last, even if we can’t fully appreciate the majesty of it, given that it is pitch black. But basically, the Wahoo is telling us that we are on the summit plateau and we’re just about to drop off down into what looks like a sheltered valley.

So, given that it’s a little bit inhospitable up here, we are gonna head down before we actually get into our sleeping bags and camp for the night. And also, we’ve got to bear in mind that there’s a rather impressive lightning storm going on just over there,

And so this doesn’t feel like a particularly sensible place to stop. But to be fair, it’s pretty cool up here. The stars are absolutely incredible. The riding is great, we’ve got enough lumens between us to enjoy it properly. Fantastic, what do you think, Josh?

– I’m loving it, it’s great. – I bet you are. – [Josh] My only regret right now is that we can’t see the view. – I know, man, me too. (gravel crunching) – Woohoo. This is so cool, man. – Just to appease Josh, I am gonna be in my shammy tonight.

This is it, it’s bivvy time. What are you doing, Josh? – It’s time to get up, Si. We’ve got some bike riding to do. – [Simon] We haven’t had any coffee yet, mate. – I know. Maybe we get a few K under our belts and get warm

And then stop for coffee. – Speak for yourself, mate, I am very warm, very comfortable. I’m quite for a lie-in, if I’m quite honest. This seems to get quicker the more you practise. Nailed it. – So this is the track we found ourselves on last night. We slept down here, just off the side of the road, and we basically descended from these mountains up here, where you can see the sun rising now.

So it’s pretty awesome, really. – Okay. Let’s do it. – Quite a spot, mate. Anyway, mate, I think we should get the big camera out for this shot. Right. Now, this is one of the bits of the trip that I’ve actually been most looking forward to, I think. And I know it sounds silly, but stopping somewhere absolutely incredible early in the morning

For breakfast and a coffee. Now, that is our master barista just there, yeah, that’s Josh. We’ve got water on the go, we’ve got our drip coffee, that’s right. And then we’ve got a selection of coffee beans. This one is sent in by a mate, this is Ember ground coffee for the travelling cyclist,

Oh yeah. – That’s us. – Well, yeah. Yeah it is, it’s me now too. – You’re a bikepacker now, Si. – Oh yeah. Look at that. That’s just incredible, isn’t it. Cheers, mate. That is actually a very good brew. – [Man] So how was that descent? – Awesome. – How’d the food? (laughs) – Awesome. – Pretty good right now. – Yeah. As second breakfasts go, this is amazing. – Yeah. – Pretty much one of the best days riding ever, and it’s still not even lunchtime. Like, that was just incredible. Yeah.

True, true highlight. – So Si, last night was your first night out under the stars, in the middle of the mountains. We’re back on the tarmac now. How are you feeling? – Ah, mate, I’m buzzing, to be honest with you. Like, it’s really funny, when we were talking about it,

Josh and I, beforehand and Josh said, “Ah, I don’t really see it “as day three and day four, it’s one big day “with a bivvy in the middle.” And I didn’t really understand, but now I do, like it’s hard to separate, you know, sleeping under the stars

From the amazing trails that we rode in order to get down to second breakfast. Moroccan traffic jam. Okay, so according to the old Wahoo we’ve got just 13 and a half Ks to go until Marrakech, so it kind of feels a little bit mission accomplished, doesn’t it, despite the fact that, for the first time in our 400K trip, we’ve found ourselves on slightly uninspiring roads, really,

And with a massive block headwind. But it’s been a pretty good day up to now, hasn’t it? – Yeah, I mean, this morning was incredible, waking up in the mountains and sort of riding our way through the (mumbles) gorges has been amazing, and it feels,

It’s nice just to have a flatter run into the finish, (mumbles) over climbing. – Yeah, we’ve, we’ve descended two and half thousand metres today and climbed only a thousand, so that gives you a pretty good idea of what kind of a day it’s been. Now Josh, I’ve got a question for you, mate.

So now I’ve got a little bit of experience at bikepacking, a little bit, I’m really intrigued. So you’ve done like, big bikepacking tours, but you’ve also got your ultra-endurance racing, which is, I guess, like competitive bikepacking for want of a better phrase. So how have you combined the two,

Like what took you from bikepacking to racing or vice versa? – Well, I actually went the other way around. So I went from racing and kind of the ultra-endurance bikepacking races towards touring. I found, like especially the Transcontinental Race, I really enjoyed seeing new countries, new cultures,

And I’ve always had that competitive aspect to me as well. – Yeah. – I’m sure you know that from your history. – (laughs) Yeah. – So I found that I loved the kind of adrenaline of it, and ultra-endurance kind of really strips you back to the bare basics.

I mean, there’s no bunch, there’s no set course, there’s no tape on the side of the track, it’s just you and your bike and you’re essentially surviving. And it almost, to me, feels like it’s kind of natural instinct. Essentially we are kind of, we’ve evolved from hunter-gatherers, and I feel like

When you’re racing, you kind of revert back to those instincts. You’re thinking about food, you’re thinking about shelter, and you’re thinking about being chased and chasing people. – Yeah, that’s pretty cool. – (mumbles) glory It’s really nice to strip back your life.

– And so, does it differ very much from what we were doing? – It does in the sense that we’re not racing nonstop, so we had quite a luxurious bivvy last night, I’m not gonna lie. – A luxurious bivvy. – It was a gentle introduction. – Now he says, oh yeah.

That was an easy one, mate. – That was. That was an amazing bivvy. – It was. – But yeah, so the main difference is, in a race you’d probably do that in one (mumbles) The less than 300 miles, that would be a nonstopper. – Yeah.

Well, I tell you what, I’m glad we stopped. – Yeah, so am I, actually. – There we go, mate. The Koutoubia Mosque. Built in the 11th century, you know. – Oh really. – The tallest building in Marrakech. And it’s got to be said, that is a fitting spot to finish our Morocco epic. Marrakech, over the Atlas, over some more Atlas mountains,

And then back over the Atlas to finish here. 400 Ks, 8000 metres of climbing. And we did it, mate! – We did. – Yeah. I tell you what, I’ve got to say a huge thank you to Josh for coming along and showing me the ropes. It’s been a fantastic experience for me;

There’s gonna be loads more videos coming up on the channel, showing exactly how we’ve done what we’ve done. I would’ve been lost without you, mate. And speaking of which, actually, thank you for the route, too, using your experience. It looked a little dicey at one point, but actually it worked out brilliantly.

So mate, thank you again. – No problem at all. Thanks for inviting me. It was a really, really tough ride, actually. – Ah, thanks. – Although it looked pretty short on paper compared to some of the rides I’ve done, it was certainly one of the toughest.

So I just wanna say on behalf of bikepackers worldwide, you’ve earned the right to finally clip your mug onto your saddlepack. (celestial music) – Noo. I’ve made it! – Well done, buddy. – Thanks, mate. (laughs) Okay, Josh, now I’m gonna suggest that we break from GCN tradition

And, rather than going and heading straight for the bar maybe we go and have showers first, what do you think? – Really? After all that effort? – Okay, so we are going straight to the bar. Do make sure you give this video a big thumbs up

If you’ve enjoyed it, and if you can’t wait until our bikepacking content begins in earnest, then why not head over to the tech channel right now, where there is an in-depth video about this very bike, the one that has just survived a bikepacking epic.